Sylvia's Journal

This morning I listed to a podcast (On Being) during which Krista Tippett interviewed Lyndsey Stonebridge, a British literary historian who has immersed herself in the works of Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a German-born politic theorist and philosopher who lived thirteen years as a stateless person, not wanted anywhere until she became an American citizen in 1950. Her books (The banality of Evil, The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition among others) have practically risen to bestseller status with the changes of the political landscapes around the world.

One phrase from the interview resonated deeply with me as they talked about bridging divides in worldview. The phrase is an antidote to the general lamenting that is either dominating the news or triggered by the news (in any form). That phrase is: “…and still…”. It is a poetic line, probably used in many poems, but I see its usefulness in daily life. First of all, in my own daily life, as in “My position at my longtime employer has been terminated…and still…there is work for me to be done.”  And then there are the bombs in Afghanistan, exploding regularly, and still, there are activists and there is good work being done, and people shop and go to the market and celebrate whatever blessings come their way. 

It is a useful sentence to spin people’s attention away from all the dark and evil and hopelessness that the media present us with, or maybe the dynamics in our family, our team, our organization…and still, something has life in it, people have, something is trying to alter things, people are, trying to bring the world back into balance in a million small ways.

A related idea, coined by Arendt, is  the“talking across banisters.” I had an encounter where I could have, but did not, talk across the bannister. It is an experience that keeps haunting me. I had all my buttons pressed by this other person (of course I was the one carrying all those buttons that beckoned ‘push me, push me!)  I lost my good self in a defense/attack routine that I am still ashamed off. I have come to realize since then that I let the limbic part of the brain take control away from my reasonable self (the prefrontal cortex). I went into that  the part that decides in milliseconds that the other is friend or foe, and, as scripted over many millennia, entered into a useless verbal fight. Ughh…and still…